One teacher’s journey

James Eggers, SSH'12, adheres to a “no nonsense” approach to teaching, taking care to remind his students of the malleability of intelligence. “The brain is a muscle that grows more powerful when you train it,” he tells them. Photo courtesy of James Eggers.

At the start of each lesson, North­eastern alumnus James Eggers, an instructor in the Teach for America pro­gram, scrawls an inspi­ra­tional quo­ta­tion on the white­board in his class­room at the Freire Charter School in Philadel­phia, where he over­sees the aca­d­emic devel­op­ment of more than two dozen ninth graders.

On a recent Monday in May, Eggers quoted Ellen Johnson Sir­leaf, Liberia’s pres­i­dent and Africa’s first female head of state: “If your dreams do not scare you,” he wrote in block let­ters, “they are not big enough.”

Eggers says he chose this par­tic­ular nugget of wisdom to moti­vate his stu­dents, many of whom cope with learning dis­abil­i­ties, but the saying could just as easily apply to his life­long dream of working for the U.S. Secret Service.

“My goal is to work for the mil­i­tary or in inter­na­tional busi­ness,” says Eggers, SSH’12, who is among a group of young alumni who founded Northeastern’s MMXI Under­grad­uate Schol­ar­ship. “I know that I’m not done serving.”

The next stop on his human­i­tarian journey is some 4,500 miles from his Philadel­phia class­room, but the work will require the same ded­i­ca­tion, inge­nuity, and patience with which he incul­cates his young pupils. In April, Eggers was accepted into the Ful­bright Eng­lish Teaching Assis­tant pro­gram, which is spon­sored by the U.S. Depart­ment of State’s Bureau of Edu­ca­tional and Cul­tural Affairs. Starting next spring, he will spend nine months in a col­lege class­room in Brazil, where he will strengthen stu­dents’ Eng­lish lan­guage skills while pro­viding insights on Amer­ican culture.

His pas­sion for teaching took shape at North­eastern, he says, where his pro­fes­sors inspired him to reach his full poten­tial. “They taught me I was capable of doing more than I ever real­ized and that I was selling myself short,” says Eggers, an inter­na­tional affairs major who grad­u­ated from the Uni­ver­sity of Pennsylvania’s master of sci­ence in edu­ca­tion pro­gram this past weekend. “If I got involved with helping kids, I knew that I could pro­vide the same inspiration.”

At Freire, he adheres to a “no non­sense” approach to teaching, taking care to remind his stu­dents of the mal­leability of intel­li­gence. “The brain is a muscle that grows more pow­erful when you train it,” he tells them. “Failure to exer­cise your brain is a failure to reach your full poten­tial, and that is unacceptable.”

Eggers repeated this mantra on each of his co-​​ops at North­eastern, which taught him some­thing new about him­self, his inter­ests, and his dreams.

In 2010, he worked as a spe­cial assis­tant at the Por­tuguese Con­sulate in Boston. There, he co-​​authored a com­par­a­tive study of the Lusophone-​​Afro Brazilian cul­ture and its influ­ence on the Amer­icas while fos­tering rela­tion­ships between the con­sulate and a score of New Eng­land schools.

“Working at the con­sulate gave me first-​​hand expe­ri­ence of what it would be like to be a diplomat and intro­duced me to the Por­tuguese lan­guage,” says Eggers, who later honed his second lan­guage skills on a Dia­logue of Civ­i­liza­tions pro­gram to Portugal.

As an intern in the coun­ter­feit money divi­sion of the city’s branch of the U.S. Secret Ser­vice, he expe­ri­enced the thrill of serving his country—and had the oppor­tu­nity to meet Pres­i­dent Barack Obama. “I got to live out my dream of working with the gov­ern­ment,” Eggers says. “It gave me an awe­some oppor­tu­nity to see inside an orga­ni­za­tion that not many people know about.”

Mean­while, he kept his sights set on giving back to kids in need. In 2011, Eggers began vol­un­teering with Foster Skills, a non­profit founded by North­eastern alumnus Mar­quis Cabrera to help sup­port local foster chil­dren. Today, he works remotely, shaping a work­force devel­op­ment pro­gram in which the non­profit part­ners with big busi­ness in Boston.

Whether at Foster Skills or Freire, Eggers loves the chal­lenge of working with youth. “It’s a huge task to shape the lives of stu­dents who this country has all but given up on, whether through lack of funding or lack of oppor­tu­ni­ties,” he says. “I think I’m doing a good job of get­ting stu­dents to invest in themselves.”

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About the Writer

Jason Kornwitz, AS' 08, has called Northeastern home since 2003. In his spare time, he enjoys playing sports, watching pretentious movies, and cooking kingly breakfasts. Follow him on Twitter @jasonkornwitz.

1 comment

Hi James — I spent one year in Yogyakarta, Indonesia as an Eng­lish Lan­guage Fellow (ELF) and worked closely with the ETAs in that country. I work at NU now. If you’d like to con­nect, please do look me up. Good luck with your posting!

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